Another tournament, another victory. Just another day at the office for this team.
The ball keeps on rolling for the Marquette women’s volleyball team, which won four matches over the Easter weekend, dropping only one set, to win yet another tournament at home.
“I think they were pretty pleased,” coach Bond Shymansky said about his players. “I think we’re reaching that dangerous precipice of fulfilling expectations and then feeling relieved instead of excited. So we want to make sure that we continue to be excited, capturing the expectation of winning. Some coaches will say spring doesn’t mean anything, and though it doesn’t count on your record, it means everything.”
Marquette defeated Wisconsin-Green Bay, Illinois-Chicago, Northwestern and Wisconsin-Milwaukee to take the Spring Invitational at the Al McGuire Center. The victories improve its record to 7-0 in the spring season and 2-0 in tournaments held at home this academic year.
“Anytime we play volleyball we want to be competitive, and we want to win every point that we play, whether it’s practice, the spring season or in the fall,” Shymansky said. “If there’s a culture shift that’s happening within our program, that’s the one that we need. The one that says we not only want to win, but we know that we will win. And we see that happening, so it’s been good.”
Marquette opened the tournament Saturday by sweeping UW-Green Bay 2-0 and then followed that with another 2-0 sweep, this time against Illinois-Chicago. Northwestern put up a tougher fight, taking a set against the Golden Eagles, but still falling 2-1. In the final match of the long day, Marquette downed cross-town rival UW-Milwaukee 2-0.
Marquette’s passing was not as crisp as it has been in previous matches. Last week, freshman libero Kelsey Warner said the passing was awesome and was leading to high kill percentages. This week, Shymansky said he was a little disappointed in the suspect passing after having passed so well the week before.
“Just our competitiveness was good,” Shymasnky said. “One of the things I told our team we are actually learning how to do this spring, a kind of unintended learning experience, is learning how to win ugly.
“We didn’t do that last season. When things didn’t go right, they went real wrong. And now when things aren’t going right, we find ways to salvage points. That’s really helping us a lot.”
The improved play of individual players is also a key factor in the improvement in results.
“We certainly give a lot of credit to (sophomore) Ashley Beyer who continues to improve and become more and more of a go-to player both in the front and back row for us,” Shymansky said. “(Junior) Nikki (Klingsporn) is really starting to set a faster tempo and really feels confident with our offense, I think.”
The young freshmen are getting in on the action as well.
“Dani Carlson has become a very steady player for us on the right side, just a very low error, high terminal killer,” Shymansky said. “Carol Henney has done a very good job of working hard and fighting for a spot in the lineup. So that’s good when we have young players that are learning and growing, improving and becoming more consistent, that’s a good sign.”
